mailto: blog -at- heyrick -dot- eu

Day twenty two

Cute!

 

Madoka Magica Piano Medley

I don't tend to tell too many people that I'm a fan of Madoka. The bright pink "magical girl" (Google "Madoka Magica") looks about as childish and girly as it is possible to be. Those who dismissed the animé as dumb (probably thinking it was fluff along the lines of Tokyo Mew Mew) missed out on something great. Those who gave the series the standard "three episode" test... well, what can I say? Episode one is cliché fluff with some touches of weirdness (Madoka's unique style) leading to episode two being a bit "hang on, what?", and it's episode three that will tear your heart out and kick it around the room.
Yes. Madoka is a magical girl. A bright pink one. Dripping with cute. With colour-coded friends. Just look at the picture above.
Only...this isn't some idyllic magic-wand-waving series, this is a class act deconstruction of the genre - to take the concept of a magical girl and play it dead serious. And as for the ending, I damn near cried. No spoilers.
Apart from the characterisation, two things stand out strongly in Madoka. The first, the art style. The 'normal' world is a standard sort of drawn world as you would expect in animé with pastel colours and a slightly unusual face design, all of which is drawn so "cute" it is leaning far into saccharin-shock. The 'magical' world looks like it is a blend of that and what looks like stop-motion from whatever was in the director's desk drawer plus a big dose of psychedelic WTF thrown in for good measure. The seconf notable thing is Yuki Kajiura's outstanding soundtrack (along with Kalafina).

Which brings us to this. A piano arrangement put together and performed by Animenz. Animenz is... how can I say this? If I was to describe him as "a pianist", then by comparison pretty much everybody else would be lamely banging on a glockenspiel. I mean, just watch this performance. It gets insane at the three minute mark, and there's just no describing from the six minute mark (although you'll need to have seen the series to understand why). This is a performance that manages to distill the feels of the Madoka series into a compact seven minutes of pure epic. Really, really, I want to rummage around my harddisc and watch this series again now.

Even if you don't know the series, please enjoy this...

 

 

Your comments:

Please note that while I check this page every so often, I am not able to control what users write; therefore I disclaim all liability for unpleasant and/or infringing and/or defamatory material. Undesired content will be removed as soon as it is noticed. By leaving a comment, you agree not to post material that is illegal or in bad taste, and you should be aware that the time and your IP address are both recorded, should it be necessary to find out who you are. Oh, and don't bother trying to inline HTML. I'm not that stupid! ☺ ADDING COMMENTS DOES NOT WORK IF READING TRANSLATED VERSIONS.
 
You can now follow comment additions with the comment RSS feed. This is distinct from the b.log RSS feed, so you can subscribe to one or both as you wish.

No comments yet...

Add a comment (v0.11) [help?] . . . try the comment feed!
Your name
Your email (optional)
Validation Are you real? Please type 33824 backwards.
Your comment
French flagSpanish flagJapanese flag
Calendar
Advent Calendar 2023
(YouTube playlist)

(Felicity? Marte? Find out!)

Last 5 entries

List all b.log entries

Return to the site index

Geekery

Search

Search Rick's b.log!

PS: Don't try to be clever.
It's a simple substring match.

Etc...

Last read at 03:03 on 2024/03/29.

QR code


Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional
Valid CSS
Valid RSS 2.0

 

© 2014 Rick Murray
This web page is licenced for your personal, private, non-commercial use only. No automated processing by advertising systems is permitted.
RIPA notice: No consent is given for interception of page transmission.

 

Have you noticed the watermarks on pictures?
Next entry - 2014/12/23
Return to top of page